


Remonstrance

by celluloidbroomcloset



Category: The Avengers (TV)
Genre: F/M, TNA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3663606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloidbroomcloset/pseuds/celluloidbroomcloset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steed and Mrs. Peel meet again after many years apart, Steed has a few choice words he still needs to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remonstrance

He was angry. In the half-light of the balcony, she could see the anger in his face. Emma tried to recall if she’d ever seen John Steed truly angry before.

“Allow me to spell this out for you, Mrs. Peel,” he said, emphasizing the Mrs. as though to reproach her with it. "You left me. Not only did you leave me, but in the cruelest way possible. Do you know what it was like, to be told of your darling husband’s return by a newspaper headline? To have you come to me with a shrug and a little joke about how it was just like him? I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. I could only let you walk out of my life, and then Tara was there, tending to me like an abandoned dog while you drove away from my apartment for the last time. At least you didn’t make me face him; that would have been the final indignity, the final blow to my admittedly considerable pride. To look your husband in the face and smile at him; thank you for sparing me that.”

His voice had taken a cold, vicious quality, the way she knew he sounded when he interrogated, when he spelled out the details of some hardened criminal’s punishments. Every word was like being struck in the face. 

“If you had tried, you couldn’t have been crueller,” he said. “Do you know how deeply I loved you? Or did you miss those words when I said them? Did you not believe me, or did you just not care?”

She turned away from him. She didn’t want him to see the tears that were forming in her eyes. 

“You might have said something,” she said quietly. “You might have come for me.”

“And what? Driven up to your apartment, sat on the sofa drinking brandy with your husband, casually mention that we’d carried on a love affair for more than two years and that would you very much mind coming back with me? You made it abundantly clear what choice you made. Was I to fall on my knees and beg you? Was that what you hoped for from me?”

“Stop, Steed. Please.” Her voice was choked, made worse because she knew, as vicious as his words were, that it was true.

“No. You’re going to hear this. You hurt me. You broke my heart. Do you understand that, Mrs. Peel? You broke my heart.”

And just like that, his voice broke too. The anger in it, the viciousness, fell apart. His voice broke and cracked. She turned as he moved to the balustrade. His hands closed around it, shoulders hunched.

“I loved you,” he said. “I have loved you for over ten years. That’s the final blow, Mrs. Peel. I’ve been angry, I’ve been remorseful, I’ve tried to forget, to stamp out your memory, to never mention you or think of you or hear of you. But you’ve won. You’ve been a phantom in my bed, a ghost in my room. I’ve searched women’s faces for one trace of you, and longed for you while holding them. It’s not fair, but I’ve never stopped loving you.” 

“Steed. John.”

She went to him, to this big, powerful man, and turned him to face her. She ran her thumbs along his cheeks and felt the wet tears. Regret surged through her. Of course she had loved him. His eyes met hers and she saw the pain in them, no longer flamed by anger. Could she tell him how she’d longed for him, cried for him, dreamt of him, for ten endless years? Could she explain how she came to regret the decision almost the moment she made it? Could she reproach him even for not asking the question she knew he longed to that day, or for not saying a word to stop her? Could she even have said that every time her husband touched her, she could only compare him to Steed? Could she compare her suffering to his?

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking into his eyes. She wondered, terrified all of a sudden, if some wounds were too deep to ever truly heal. 

“If I could take it all back, I would,” she continued. “But I can’t. Steed, when you called me a few weeks back, it was like coming back to life. I’ve missed you. I can’t ask you to forgive me, but I can admit that I was wrong. Horribly wrong.”

She looked at his chest, afraid to see the answer in his eyes. 

“It can’t be too late. I can’t take back the past, Steed, but I can do something about the future.” She put one hand against his heart. He did not pull away. “And I know that my life has been empty without you in it.”

Emma felt his chest rising and falling, and the heart that beat beneath the silk shirt; a heart she had broken, and earnestly wanted to repair, if only he could see past his anger. They stood like that for a long while. Then his hand, gently and surely, closed around hers.


End file.
